With the technological development goes toward providing personalized services, the interaction between digital contents and users are getting more and more vital. In essence, most currently-available interactive contents are the aggregation of existing contents and interaction through social network, such as rating, voting, sharing, etc; and they are not real interactive contents for the users to interact with themselves. The display of media contents, on the other hand, has been pursuing presence experiences that are more vivid or real. However, the presentation of the media content provided by the media provider consists of viewpoint angles that are subjectively screen or switch by the film director or the program director during the broadcasting or recording of the media content. It cannot provide a more flexible or personalized service to the viewers, and hence the viewers can only passively receive the display of single and limited scenes. Therefore, if it is feasible to provide the images that allow the viewers to select viewpoint in multiple viewpoint angles, it will be possible to bring the viewers a more vivid experience that mimics the real world. Accordingly, in addition to the operations of playing, pausing, and forwarding, the viewers are allowed to freely select mages of other viewpoint angles, so that they can track the characters or scenes of interest. In this way, the viewers can have the options of content selections.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,574,836 discloses a method of changing three-dimensional images according to the position of the user. The method uses a means for determining the position of a viewer and a graphics engine for switching the graphics instructions into data for presenting in a display; and when the viewer changes his position, the method simulates and presents three-dimensional images in different viewpoint angle. However, this method requires a great deal of calculation to process the simulation of three-dimensional images, and the simulated images tend to loss their fidelity. Also, it can only process a single image source and cannot simulate a series of images, nor to be applied in images for live broadcasting.
US patent application publication No. US 2010/0026788 discloses a method for generating free viewpoint images in three-dimensional movement. The method includes taking multi-viewpoint video images using a plurality of cameras located on an identical plane that recording the object by horizontally circumventing the object and a camera located above the object, and then uses a processing procedure to generate virtual viewing-angle images that are parallel to the plane of the plurality of cameras or of other angles. However, this method only allows the use of a plurality of cameras to record one object at a time, and since the data are huge and the images must undergo post-production processing, this method cannot be applied in images of large scenes or images for live broadcasting. Also, this method does not provide operational interface that allows the user to select the viewpoint angle freely.
Further, U.S. Pat. No. 8,189,036 discloses method for combining a background image modeling and a projection switching matrix to generate multi-viewpoint images. The sender establishes a scene background model through consecutive images, the receive receives the current image, the image depth (depth Map), the background model and the projection switching matric, to convert the current image through the projection switching matric, which is then combined with the background image to synthesize the virtual viewing-angle image. However, it failed to provide an interactive operation method, and the data transmission between the sender and the receiver does not include methods for adaptive content compression and transmission. Hence, the data are huge and is not applicable in live broadcasting or common terminal devices.
In view of the foregoing, there exist problems and disadvantages in the related art for further improvement; however, those skilled in the art sought vainly for a suitable solution. In view of the foregoing, there is an urgent need in the related field regarding allowing users to freely switch among different viewpoint angles while viewing the video so as to obtain a more vivid presence experience, providing users with simple and smooth experience of personalized interactive services.